Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Aurangzib, made capital of this incident to slander his brother to the Emperor, saying, See the piety and abstinence of this hypocritical
knave! He has gone to the dogs for the sake of a wench of his aunt's household. By chance the rose of her life withered in its very spring
time, and left the prince seared with the brand of eternal separation. She is buried at Aurangabad close to the big tank. On the day of her
death the prince became very unwell; in extreme agitation he rode out to hunt. Mir Askari (Aqil Khan), who was in attendance, secured a
private audience and remonstrated, What wisdom is there in resolving to hunt in this (disturbed) state? The prince replied, (Verse)
Lamentation in the house cannot relieve the heart,
In solitude alone you can cry to your heart's content.
Aqil Khan recited the following couplet [of his own composition] as apt for the occasion:
How easy did love appear, but alas how hard it is!
How hard was separation, but what repose it gave to the beloved!
The prince could not check his tears, but committed the verses to his memory, (M.U. i. 790-792) after vainly trying to learn the modest
poet's name. (Ibid. ii. 823).
Manucci (i. 231) narrates the story thus:
Aurangzib grew very fond of one of the dancing-women in his harem, and through the great love he bore to her he neglected for some
time his prayers and his austerities, filling up his days with music and dances; and going even farther, he enlivened himself with wine, which
he drank at the instance of the said dancing-girl. The dancer died, and Aurangzib made a vow never to drink wine again nor to listen to
music. In after-days he was accustomed to say that God had been very gracious to him by putting an end to that dancing-girl's life, by reason
of whom he had committed so many iniquities, and had run the risk of never reigning through being occupied in vicious practices.
Now, when did the episode happen? Aurangzib was twice subahdar of the Deccan, viz, 16361644 and 16531657. It was only during
the second of these periods that this Khan-i-Zaman, Murshid Quli Khan Khurasani (M.U. iii. 493), and Mir Askari served in the Deccan.
Therefore, the date seems to have been 1653 at the earliest, when Aurangzib was 35 years old and the father of six children; he was not
exactly a passionate youth who might consider the world well lost for love.
Akbar made it a rule that the concubines of the Mughal Emperors should be named after the places of their birth or the towns in which
they were admitted to the harem. (Waris's Padishahnamah, 45b). Hence we have ladies surnamed Akbarabadi, Fathpuri, Aurangabadi,
Zainabadi, and Udaipuri. Zainabad is the name of a suburb on the bank of the Tapti opposite Burhanpur. In Inayetullah's Ahkam (131a) our
heroine's tomb is mentioned, though her name is wrongly spelt Zainpuri.
http://persian.packhum.org/